Marathon bombings struck on holy ground

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April 19, 2013

A makeshift memorial is set up near the Boston Marathon finish line. As much as running marathons looks like a solitary journey, it's a communal one, and never so much as this week.

When it comes to running, America often looks like a country of apostles and apostates.

For believers like Olympian Ryan Hall, marathons have an almost-biblical importance. “I have ... had personal experiences in my own running when I felt very strongly that God was involved,” the evangelical Christian said.

Other Americans — athletic atheists, you might call them — roll their eyes and see marathons as a painful waste of a perfectly nice day.

I've run four marathons, but my training regimen reads like a list of the Seven Deadly Sins. I swill beer on the night before long runs (gluttony). I don't stretch (sloth). And I confess to an occasional desire to trip faster runners (envy).

Despite my failings and flat feet, my eyes remain fixed on Mecca. And for me, as for many runners, Mecca is the Boston Marathon.

Most races have an open-door policy, but Boston has stringent time requirements. You have to earn the right to run down Boylston Street.

Just as Jews pray to celebrate Passover “next year in Jerusalem” and Muslims pledge to visit Mecca, marathoners want to “run Boston.”

Even those of us who haven't raced in the nation's oldest and pre-eminent marathon know the route. Heartbreak Hill. The “scream tunnel.” The kissing women of Wellesley College. The finish line at Copley Square.

The path to Boston is littered with nagging injuries and even more self-doubts. That's the dirty secret of long-distance running: Your spirit wants to quit long before your legs do.

Runners get different kinds of “highs” from pushing through that wall, from hushing the ever-eloquent ego. Some feel a rare sense of freedom. The late George Sheehan, the philosopher-saint of the marathon tribe, compared it to a monastery, “a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.”

For me, running is little like a Buddhist lesson. I've learned that fixating on the goal is hopeless: 26.2 miles is always too far away. Better to take it step by step, improve inch by inch, moment by moment. When your spirit flags, focus on the people around you.

A meme that has been circulating since Monday's bombing quotes Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon in 1967, “If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon.”

Many people probably assume that Switzer had runners in mind. But I think she was talking about marathon spectators and volunteers, the people who wake up early to hand water and jelly beans and orange slices to runners they've never met.

More than once, my eyes have welled up hearing strangers' cheers. It's almost like they're praying for you.

Those volunteers and spectators were among Monday's casualties. So was Martin Richard, the 8-year-old there to watch his father cross the finish line. The survivors included men like Carlos Arredondo, who has lost sons to suicide and war but still cheered on runners and rushed to the site of the bombing.

As much as marathoners talk of Boston as sacred ground, there's also a sacred bond — both inside and outside of the Church of Running. It connects marathoners and the friends and family and strangers who might not understand the need to race 26.2 miles but nevertheless offer their time and support.

Monday's bombing may have tested that bond, but it couldn't destroy it. For as much as marathoning looks like a solitary journey, it's a communal one. Like everything in life, you need plenty of people — and plenty of prayers — to reach the finish line.